It is a Monday, Wednesday, Friday class with Monday being a large lecture hall lecture from a philosopher on the moral system of the week,...
I would like to flesh out my 'lecture' Skeptics can't be soldiers and see how that played in the hall.
Following recommendations are submitted:
1. Separate but equal facilities and curriculum.
2. Consistent regs and policies for all - written unambiguously in English and any other language with a 5% or greater represenation in the group/brigade/battalion, etc.
3. Common Sense review of behavior standards and disciplinary program, to level the playing field as best possible; seek disciplinary issue resolution at the lowest possible level in the organization (using a framework of expectations of the mids/cadets, institute student leadership involvement in investigation, trial, and punishment of perpetrators.)
4. Get off the social soapbox and back into physics, math, langauges, and law of war that will serve the graduate commissioned officer in the next 40 years of his/her life.
5. Return to the practice of requiring a prospctive commissioned officer to serve in a probationary status for at least one year after graduating; award commissison at successful completion of that period.
6. In the Navy, require every junior officer at least once to monitor the extraordinary transformation of a petty officer into a Chief Petty Officer.
War is hard. Why should professional preparation for it not also be rigorous? However, training for war must be fair - even though war often is not.
Resp'y given from one who served a month and a half less than 33 years as an enlisted man and then a commissioned officer.
Steve Myers, CAPT USN Ret.
War is hard.
This strikes me as one as those things for which the exact opposite is true.
i was an enlisted man, not an officer, so i can't speak for the naval academy. i was, however, a Marine and an infantryman, no less. there were no women in my unit. hell, there weren't even women on my camp, except for NBC classes. it was definitely not a female friendly environment. it was 7-800 grunts, dirty, mean men. some might argue this was necessary. war, as gen. sherman said, is all hell. who better to charge into hell than a bunch of devils, or devil dogs, more appropriately (sorry, another inside joke)? however, in retrospect, perhaps this is not such a good policy, given the growing co-ed nature of our military. i agree with you SteveG--the culture can, and must change. this will not be an easy sell however. most certainly, it can be instituted at the academy level, in such a regimented environment, by a set of rules such as the skipper has proposed above--but a grunt unit is an entirely different monster. i could barely contain some of my men as it was, and that was usually by resorting to threats and violence myself. but it must change. if there's one thing all military folks possess, it is the ability to be taught..
I don't think these incidents can be explained away with the "few bad apples" line, because I see these known incidents as the tip of the iceberg. For the few scandals we know about, I imagine there's way way more that we don't know about.
You might like the Philosophy Forums.
I really liked what you wrote about women in the military. If you want to read an interview with Michelle Manhart, the woman who was kicked out of the air force for appearing in Playboy, go to:
http://www.orato.com/node/1982
Thanks~!
Commenting by HaloScan
